Russia World Cup 2018
Out of context: Reply #327
- Started
- Last post
- 415 Responses
- Fax_Benson0
The Southgate-as-saviour thing was starting to go overboard but this post, below a Barney Ronay piece in the Guardian, very nicely sums up the last few weeks as an England watcher.
-
So sick of the endlessly shifting goalposts according to which some will always find spurious grounds to judge this England team deficient.Especially sick of those deficiencies being presented as somehow proof that those doing the judging have some unique insight into football that escapes everyone else when they are in fact common knowledge. I know of no one who is blind to this team‘s limitations or who was thoughtlessly convinced of their superiority to their competitors.
And what a joyless attitude it is! This team has exceeded expectations in so many ways above and beyond their already wonderful achievements on the pitch. And I say that as someone who finds reasons to be dour at a unicorn‘s gymkhana.
Gareth Southgate deserves so, so much credit. He has harnessed that elusive magic only World Cups generate, and regardless of what happens he may just have effected changes in the England team as seismic as Klinsmann with Germany in 2006, something that has never happened for England given Robson, Venables and Hoddle all got told to do one after their best tournament performances. This team could stay together for one, in some cases two, World Cups, with an identity being forged in the present.
He makes it look easy but if you think about it, Southgate has made so many decisions that were by no means a given. 3 at the back - and then making Walker at CB, Maguire a key player; nurturing the qualities of Lingard; Young and Trippier as WBs, and their prowess at set pieces (as well as the superbly drilled set piece routines that have been so effective); easing out underperforming older players (remember what Big Sam had to say about Rooney playing wherever he wished?); making Pickford his first choice keeper and cutting the egotistical, potentially disruptive Joe Hart from the squad entirely; cultivating and empowering the team to build from the back for the first time perhaps in living memory; harnessing the intelligence as well as goal scoring of Harry Kane...the list goes on.
And those are the strictly on-pitch decisions. He has also succeeded for the first time in creating a proper team, including squad players, with solidarity and without the neuroses that before seemed to be absorbed by osmosis by incoming players until it seemed that a disposition to stolidity and negativity was the only constant regardless of the teamA‘s compositions.
And he has done it all with an intuitive affinity for the actual experience of watching England play, supporting them without that meaning bleak jingoism but a force for unifying people from whatever background, something that has been like a rite of passage ushering millions of boys and girls into childhood, a shared experience between children and parents...In short, an immense source for unforgettable experiences that successive teams, and managers, appeared to have soured forever.
So there‘s all that, plus exceeding in absolutely objective terms every team since 1990, or there is carping about the strength of opposition. I know which one I prefer - although what attraction there is in such carping I’m quite happy to remain unable to comprehend.
- Whatever happens from here on in, England have been transformed into a team worthy of following again. Which I think he was saying, albeit more eruditely : )Eighty
- Remember when, having lost, Rooney was mouthing off into the cameras about the fans? None of that cuntery with these lads.Eighty
- indeed eightyfadein11